Hoping to Draw Moviegoers and Filmmakers, Amazon Heads to Theaters

“I think there is a legitimate case to be made that some movies are better experienced in the theater with a group of people,” Mr. Affleck said. “If they can provide robust theatrical releases where the movies are well supported, then it will move Amazon to the front of the pack.”

When Ms. Salke, a veteran television executive, took over Amazon’s studio in 2018, her knowledge of the movie business was cursory at best. She had spent years overseeing television at NBC, shepherding hits like “This Is Us.” At the beginning of her tenure, she plunked down close to $50 million for five movies at the 2019 Sundance Film Festival. The films, including “Late Night,” and “Brittany Runs a Marathon,” underperformed.

Suddenly, Amazon, which had been a friend to the theater business with its films “Manchester by the Sea” and “The Big Sick,” was no longer interested in the cutthroat world of box office receipts, where the entire industry knows if a movie is a success or a failure by Saturday morning of opening weekend.

“It was like, why would we put ourselves through that step if it’s going to tear down the film and require us to double our investment in marketing to get to Prime to kind of turn that story around?” she said.

When Amazon bought Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer in 2021, there was trepidation that the historic label would be reduced to a tile on the Prime website. MGM had recently been resurrected by Michael DeLuca and Pamela Abdy and had made theatrical commitments to filmmakers like Mr. Scott, Paul Thomas Anderson and Sarah Polley.

Article source: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/04/07/business/media/amazon-air-movies-theaters.html